IMD World Competitiveness Booklet 2020

Preface

We are particularly pleased and proud to present the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2020 . The 32 nd edition of this publication is launched at a critical moment for the whole world. We heard about COVID-19 in early January and since then it has become a permanent feature of our daily life. What started as a public health issue, became a worldwide health systems crisis, which evolved into an economic and financial crisis as well. Its repercussions affect the lives of people, companies, cities and countries. The predictions for the performance of economies around the world are dire. In addition, concerns about a potential ‘second’ wave of infections further compound the situation. It was within the general lockdown of cities and countries around the world that we worked on this edition of the Yearbook. Working from home, coordinating via the internet, gathering data and insights and validating the accuracy of the information was particularly challenging. At the same time, this novel situation demanded the creation of a new framework to push our work forward. And this is exactly what we did. We continue serving our mission, that is, to understand and analyze the competitiveness of 63 economies. This year, special care must be provided in interpreting the results; the hard data we employ are realizations of 2019 and therefore, pre-COVID-19, while the responses from mid- and upper-level managers to our Executive Opinion Survey were collected between February and April of 2020 and coincide with the outbreak of the pandemic worldwide. An important component of the competitiveness study is to align the criteria we employ with the important challenges and concerns of the world economy. Thus, this year, new criteria were added to reflect the importance of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The complete list of the criteria can be found on p. 31. They provide a perception of where an economy stands with respect to different sustainable goals that need to be satisfied in ten years such as education and the environment, inclusion and empowerment, ageing and health. The results present a familiar pattern in the factors that have influenced the current performance of highly ranked countries. Such patterns emerge around international trade and investment, employment, the openness of societies,

4

IMD WORLD COMPETITIVENESS BOOKLET 2020